Chinese officials renewed a call for an “international mechanism” to modulate artificial intelligence technology abroad while regulators work to prevent domestic breakthroughs that could endanger the regime.
“We believe in a people-centered and ‘AI for good’ approach in the regulation of AI tech and participate in global cooperation in a highly responsible way,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Thursday.
July 13, 2023 6:34 pm
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/636690/china-fears-ai-will-promote-overthrow-of-the-socialist-system/
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That broad-minded message makes a marked contrast with China’s competitive posture in other arenas, such as Beijing’s refusal to discuss arms control with the United States. And while world leaders and military strategists see artificial intelligence technology as a key to global dominance, Chinese officials have signaled their misgiving that unbridled innovation could threaten their grip on power at home.
“It’s like putting a speed limit on a race car — it’s slowing things down,” Measurable AI co-founder Heatherm Huang told Reuters. “While the U.S. is racing ahead with AI, China is hitting the brakes with more rules.”
At the center of those rules is the imperative to “adhere to core socialist values,” as Chinese regulators put it in new guidance unveiled Thursday. The Chinese Communist Party is concerned that the emerging software — programs that “interact in a conversational way” with users, to use OpenAI’s description of ChatGPT — could spread information that undermines its ideological control.
The new guidance, according to a South China Morning Post translation, emphasizes that the chatbots must not say anything that “incites subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system, endangers national security and interests, damages the image of the country, incites secession from the country, undermines national unity and social stability, promotes terrorism, extremism, national hatred and ethnic discrimination, violence, obscenity and pornography.”
Chinese technology companies are keen to assure the regime of their loyalty.
“We believe that AI is bound to provide a lot of support for the development of industrial intelligence,” Baidu market consultant Wu Hao told Sky News last week at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. “When Baidu and Chinese enterprises develop AI-related technology, we follow our president’s command: ‘Setting our sights on the health and safety of the people, major scientific needs of the country, global frontiers of science and technology, and national economic development.’”
The regime’s cautious approach is in tension with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s desire to have a “world-class military,” at least when viewed in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prediction that “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper offered a similar forecast, albeit in more moderate terms.
“Whichever nation harnesses AI first will have a decisive advantage on the battlefield for many, many years,” Esper said in 2019.
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Wang, the Chinese diplomat, suggested that governments adopt a more collaborative approach.
“China stands ready to step up communication and exchanges on AI security governance with the rest of the world and help establish a broad-based international mechanism and a set of widely accepted international AI governance framework, standards and norms,” he said.
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